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Selig enjoys White Sox success

Selig enjoys White Sox success

CHICAGO -- Without playing postseason favorites, the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, is very happy to see the Chicago White Sox in the competition this October.

"I'm always neutral, at least I hope I am," the Commissioner said Wednesday night during a visit to Game 2 of the AL Division Series at U.S. Cellular Field. "But for the White Sox, given their history and everything that has happened, and for Chicago, this is big.

"I go way back with the White Sox. My recollection is that I first started going to Comiskey Park in the mid-1940s. Watching the game [Tuesday afternoon] in my office, seeing the excitement here, I don't mind telling you, I got a big kick out of it."

Earlier, following the coverage of the White Sox in the Chicago media, as their 15-game lead shrunk to 1 1/2 games in the AL Central, the Commissioner said with a smile, "I feared for mass suicide."

The excitement that Selig saw among the 40,799 patrons at U.S. Cellular Field was a continuation of the excitement brought on by the Wild Card races. "The last couple of weeks were really riveting," the Commissioner said. "I don't mind telling you that I recall all the criticism I received about the Wild Card 12 or 13 years ago. The last five or six years have been really good, but this year, if you wanted to write a script for this, you couldn't have written a better one, right down to the very date."

Mike Bauman is a national columnist for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.